“Oh, you know—hazing, the men would call it; only of course we’ll have nice little amusing stunts that couldn’t frighten a fly. Is anything doing to-night?”
“In the house, you mean?” asked Lucile. “Not a thing. But if you want our room——”
“Of course we do,” interposed Madeline calmly. “It’s the only decent-sized one in the house. Go and straighten it up, and let this be a lesson to you to keep it in order hereafter. Polly, you invite the freshmen for nine o’clock. I’ll get some more sophomores and seniors, and some costumes. Come back here to dress in half an hour.”
“Goodness,” said the stately Lucile, slipping out of her nest of pillows. “How you do rush things through, Madeline.”
Madeline smiled reminiscently. “I suppose I do,” she admitted. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve looked upon life as a big impromptu stunt. I got ready for a year abroad once in half an hour, and I gave the American ambassador to Italy what he said was the nicest party he’d ever been to on three hours’ notice, one night when mother was ill and father went off sketching and forgot to come in until it was time to dress. Oh, it’s just practice,” said Madeline easily,—“practice and being of a naturally hopeful disposition. Run along now.”
“I thought I’d better not tell them,” Madeline confided to the genius of her room, when the sophomores were safely out of earshot, “that I haven’t the faintest notion what to do with those freshmen after we get them there. Being experienced, I know that something will turn up; but they, being only sophomores, might worry. Now what the mischief”—Madeline pulled out drawer after drawer of her chiffonier—“can I have done with those masks?”
The masks turned up, after the Belden House “Merry Hearts” had searched wildly through all their possessions for them, over at the Westcott in Babbie Hildreth’s chafing dish, where she had piled them neatly for safe-keeping the June before.
“Madeline said for you each to bring a sheet,” explained Helen Adams, who had been deputed to summon the B’s and Katherine. “They’re to dress up in, I guess. She said we couldn’t lend you the other ones of ours, because they might get dirty trailing around the floors, and we must have at least one apiece left for our beds.”
The B’s joined rapturously in the preparations for Madeline’s mysterious party. Katherine could not be found, and Rachel and Eleanor were both engaged for the evening; but that was no matter, Madeline said. It ought to be mostly a Belden House affair, but a few outsiders would help mystify the freshmen.
Promptly at quarter to nine Polly, Lucile, and the rest of the Belden House contingent arrived, each bringing her sheet with her, and presently Madeline’s room swarmed with hooded, ghostly figures.